***The following is an unedited auto-generated transcript and may contain serious errors and speakers other than Dallas Willard. It is included here to assist your study. Please check the original audio for an authentic record of the event.
Speaker: September 24, 1978, Faith Evangelical Church, the morning service, Dr. Dallas Willard, preaching, the subject, The Elders, 1 Peter 5, 1. Listen carefully to the reading of God’s word found in 1 Peter, the fourth chapter, reading from the 12th verse through the fifth chapter, the 11th verse, 1 Peter 4, verses 12-5, 11. Beloved think it not strange concerning the fiery trial which is to try you, as though some strange thing happened unto you, but rejoice inasmuch as ye are partakers of Christ’s sufferings, that when his glory shall be revealed, ye may be glad also with exceeding joy. If ye be reproached for the name of Christ, happy are ye, for the Spirit of glory and of God resteth upon you. On their part he is evil spoken of, but on your part he is glorified. But let none of you suffer as a murderer, or as a thief, or as an evildoer, or as a busybody in other men’s matters. Yet if any man suffer as a Christian, let him not be ashamed, but let him glorify God on this behalf. For the time is come that judgment must begin at the house of God, and if it first begin at us, what shall the end be of them that obey not the gospel of God? And if the righteous scarcely be saved, where shall the ungodly and the sinner appear? Wherefore let them that suffer according to the will of God commit the keeping of their souls to him in well-doing, as unto a faithful creator. The elders which are among you I exhort, who am also an elder and a witness of the sufferings of Christ, and also a partaker of the glory that shall be revealed. Feed the flock of God which is among you, taking the oversight thereof, not by constraint, but willingly, not for filthy lucre, but of a ready mind, neither as being lords over God’s heritage, but being examples to the flock. And when the chief shepherd shall appear, ye shall receive a crown of glory that fadeth not away. Likewise ye younger, submit yourselves unto the elder, yea, all of you be subject one to another, and be clothed with humility. For God resisteth the proud, but giveth grace to the humble. Humble yourselves therefore unto the mighty hand of God, that he may exalt you in due time, casting all your care upon him, for he careth for you. Be sober, be vigilant, because your adversary the devil, as a roaring lion, walketh about, seeking whom he may devour, whom resist steadfast in the faith, knowing that the same afflictions are accomplished in your brethren that are in the world. But the God of all grace, who hath called us unto his eternal glory by Christ Jesus, after ye have suffered a while, make you perfect, establish, strengthen, settle you. To him be glory and dominion for ever and ever.
Dallas: Thank you, Kim. That’s one of my favorite songs. If you’re singing it sometime and I’m here, and you hear me joining in, you’ll know it’s just because I can’t help it, because I love that song. It says about all there is to say, really. It tells everything there is to tell and to know the watchful eye of a loving God, and we can cast our cares upon him, because he cares for us. He’s present in our lives. He watches. His love is over us. So thank you very much for that song.
Let us bow in prayer. Lord, we’re grateful now to have the occasion, the opportunity to open thy word. And this morning, as we look at the vocation of the elder in the New Testament, we pray that you will give us special grace, that we might understand our calling and our election, that we might know what it leads to, that we might see our way comfortably and efficaciously into it, every one of us, and to understand that the Scriptures are speaking to us this morning. Reveal the glory of the risen Christ in our lives and in our mind. Now for these few moments, as we wait before your word, we ask it on behalf of Christ and for the sake of his kingdom, amen.
If you will turn back in your Scriptures to the fifth chapter of 1 Peter, I shall be dwelling upon some words in the first verses, which Cal read to us a few moments ago. This morning as I looked out and saw you all waving, those bulletins and songs and music, my mind went back many years to the old churches I used to go to, and we always had a plentiful supply of fans. And if you look on the front, there would be a picture of Jesus praying in the garden, or perhaps carrying the little lamb, the good shepherd, and it turned over on the back and it said, Wilkins and Brothers Funeral Home. I can tell that you’ve been there too, a lot of you. I know how old you are. Well, this might be a suitable Sunday to preach on the Hebrew children in the fiery furnace or Lazarus and Diaries or something of that sort, but we’re going to be dwelling this morning on the topic, the vocation of the elders, and the text which I take for my theme are just the first words of the fifth chapter of 1 Peter, the elders which are among you, the elders which are among you. Now get simply first the picture of a group of people, and within that group there is a special group of people called the elders.
Last Sunday I spoke to you on the theme, Occupy Till I Come, and I tried to address every one of your hearts and minds to this great challenge of putting all of our life and all of its aspects entirely at the disposal of God and allowing all of our life to be a temple of God in all of its aspects, but now I want to say to you this morning that this is not something which you can do on your own. There are many things which should be said by way of addition and elaboration of the theme, Occupy Until I Come. I cannot, I could not begin to go into all of them, but this one thing I wish to enforce today upon your mind, and that is that the occupation which Christ has in mind for every one of us is something which is fulfilled only in the fellowship of the redemptive community, only in the fellowship of the church.
Christianity is not an individualistic religion in the sense that you can just sort of go off on your own and know the fullness and goodness of God. If you are forced off on your own, if you’re thrown alone, God will be with you. But it is not something in which you are intended to know the fullness of God simply by picking up your own little life and going off and living it by yourself. It is something to be lived in the community of redemption. That’s why it is called a kingdom. The kingdom of God, the kingdom of heaven, is a group of people living together under a common Lord.
In Timothy, 1st Timothy, we find a phrase which we don’t hear preached on very much, I think, in 1st Timothy 3, the 15th verse. Paul here is talking to Timothy, and he is telling him what to do as a young pastor, but incidentally he says something very important about the church. If I tarry long, Paul says to Timothy, I’ve written all of these things to thee, that thou ought mayest know what thou oughtest to, how thou oughtest to behave thyself in the house of God. Now he’s not talking about a building, and he quickly explains, which is the church of the living God, the pillar and ground of the truth, the pillar and the ground of the truth. I want to try to say something very important to you about this, and you must always keep it in mind when you think of the church.
Truth is a dangerous thing. Truth is a dangerous thing. Many centuries ago, the English philosopher Francis Bacon said, knowledge is power. Knowledge is power. Now you see, as long as you have no knowledge about something and you don’t know what to do about it, you have no choices to make. You simply have to take what comes. But when you begin to get knowledge, power comes with it, and with that comes responsibility. We all know the Frankenstein myth, the story of the mad scientist, as it were, that creates a monster, and then the monster kills and destroys and destroys the scientist himself. We all know the story of the Tower of Babel, and the Tower of Babel was one of the first effects of a technology which came into the hands of people, and they didn’t know what to do with it. They decided, let’s make a tower. Go all the way up to heaven. Now you have to remember that they didn’t think of the heavens in the way we do. They thought of the heavens as perhaps a mile or so up there, and that they could build a tower and actually get up there. The temptation in the garden was based upon a point of knowledge, you remember. Thou shalt be as God, knowing good and evil. But he didn’t tell them that when they got to know good and evil, they would do the evil and not the good. Now let me return to the point, knowledge, truth is power and brings awesome responsibility. You live in a world in which one million dollars is spent every minute on armament. One million dollars every minute, every minute is spent on armament. The last time I counted them, I believe there were 1,444 minutes in a day. One billion, four hundred forty-four million dollars a day spent on armament. You live in a world which is mad with the power that comes through knowledge.
Now return to the verse, the church of the living God, the pillar and ground of truth. I used to read this verse, I’d think, oh, what does, why does the truth need a pillar and ground? Why doesn’t, isn’t it the truth that holds everything else up? Now let me say to you very soberly, it is not. You here have come together to build what I believe will be a great church in this area. And one of the things you must remember is that the truth is not self-supporting. It may come as a shock to you to hear this, but you must hear it. The truth is not self-supporting. And truth can do great harm unless it is grounded in a fellowship of believers, a fellowship of people who are filled with faith and hope and love. And only then, only then is truth safe. Truth is not safe in this world in which we live. Truth will cause great harm because the person who gets a hold of it immediately thinks I can use it to take advantage of other people who don’t have it. Truth causes great harm in churches because it builds a sort of elevated pride which says, why, I believe the truth, and never looks inside to see the anger and the hatefulness and the smallness and the meanness and the fear that lies inside. James speaks to believers in his time, Jewish believers, who through the centuries had struggled with the truth that there’s one God. And believe me, it took them centuries to get that through their head. There’s one God. And now he says to them, you believe in one God? Well, my compliment, you are to be congratulated. The devil also believes. And many people believe that they are right before God and that all is well in their soul because they have a good sense to believe things that every devil in hell believes. Truth is important, it is fundamental, but it is not self-supporting. And as you come together to build this great church, you have to have people who will serve as the pillar and ground of truth, who know how to contain it, who know how to, what to do with it, who know how to give it to others and how to live with it in themselves. And these people are the elders of the church.
Now, let me say something about the word elder very quickly. Elder is a term that is used in the New Testament with some ambiguity. It refers to a rather unspecified group of men and women in the church who have progressed in the way of Christ sufficiently that they stand out as individuals of spiritual responsibility and authority and power. They assumed that anyone, they simply assumed that anyone who had been in the way of Christ for a while would naturally move into that position, who would naturally move in to that position.
There would be no such thing as a person who just sort of got in the door and stopped. And that’s why they referred to them as elders. Now in the worldly sense, if you go back to the 32nd chapter of Job, you’ll see Elijah taking on the counselors of Job and saying that great men are not always wise, nor do men who are white in the head always have understanding. In the worldly sense, that’s true. It is possible to grow old and just be an old fool. But it is assumed that if you’re in the fellowship of Christ, that will never happen. And the mere fact that you have been in that way for a long while will indicate that you have moved into the place where you can stand as an overseer in the flock of God that is among you. And as an example, and out of love, you will be able to help and minister to all of those around you. That’s why they call them elders.
Now you will never find, you will find, for example, in the New Testament, you will find for the bishop a set of requirements, which a bishop must have. He is a special type of overseer. You will find a special set of requirements for deacons. They’re a special type of servant. You will never find the set of requirements for the elder in the New Testament. There is no list which says if you’re going to be an elder, you have to be this, that, and the other. And that is because the elder had this peculiar role. He may be appointed. He may not be appointed. He’s still an elder. An elder, when they are in office, they do not cease to become elders in the spiritual sense when they’re not in office. And they do not become elders in the spiritual sense when they are appointed. It is a spiritual appointment. It is a spiritual appointment in which men and women who have profited in the word of Christ and have grown to the point to where they can now say, follow me, I can help you, I can tell you what is going on here, I can minister in this capacity with complete confidence that they are working with Christ, will step forward and exercise that great ministry over the flock of God, which is in the midst of the church.
That is a calling for you, and that is a calling for me. That is a calling for every one of us to grow into it. There is no one here who is a Christian, who should not expect to be an elder, no one. And everyone should understand what the work of the elder is.
I want to take just a couple of points in what the elder is in a moment and elaborate on them. But there’s one thing I want to stress in the negative sense. There’s one thing that I want to say to you. You should never hold up to yourself as a standard for being an elder and exercising oversight in the flock of God, which is in your midst. There are certain worldly standards of success. And many times the church has assumed that these are marks of God’s favor. There are certain misunderstandings about who is really right and who is really powerful that you must never assume, or it will kill your faith. It will kill your faith.
You as an elder are to stand as an example and overseer in the house of God. But that does not mean that you are a financial success. It does not mean that you are well educated. Let me go more deeply. It does not mean that all has gone well in your family. I know many people who are tremendously hindered in their faith because they feel like they’re failures because their loved ones, their husband, their wife, their child, their mother, father, whatever it may be, have gone wrong in any of a million different ways. And what we must understand is that that is no mark of the standard of success.
Jesus’s own brothers did not accept and believe in him until after he was dead, as far as we can tell. They thought he was crazy. They mocked him. Jesus said, a man’s enemies when they’re a follower in the household of God, in the kingdom of God, a man’s enemy will be those of his own household. He said, do you think I’m come to send peace? I’m not come to send peace. I’m come to send a sword.
Now you see, sometimes God will honor a prayer, a witness, a work in your life, and he will give you, or he will give to another person, an act of conversion and confession which will bring your loved one to God, but let me tell you, if you are living with an unsaved mate or an unsaved child or an unsaved parent, do not take that as a mark of your failure. Do not take it as a mark of your failure. I say it again. I know of so many people, and I know in a group this large, there are many who have tragedies in their families, and these stand in the way of them stepping forth to exercise the gift and ministry of the elder in the household of God. Their strength is sapped, their prayers are undercut, their witness is destroyed because a false sense of guilt and failure rests in their mind. Lay it aside. You have to take a stand against it. You have to say, that is not the mark of an elder. Someone says, how can you stand as an example if you can’t even win your own family to Christ? Don’t believe that. Don’t believe it. There’s much I’d like to say about that. All I have time to say this morning is do not believe it. That is not the standard.
Let’s look at some things which are the standard, and I give them to you just in two words. I know every good sermon is supposed to have three main points to it, but I’m just going to give you two. And the first one is purity. The elder stands as an example of purity. Father is an interesting verse in James, the first chapter, and the 27th verse, which I would like to elaborate on with you briefly. Pure religion and undefiled before God and the Father is this, pure religion and undefiled before God and the Father is this, to visit the fatherless and the widows in their affliction, and to keep himself unspotted from the world.
Now an elder is a person who has mastered the contents of this verse. They are pure from the world, and they are pure from the world standard of judgment. Now we all know that holiness and sanctification have been given a bad name because of the trivial things which they’ve been associated with. You know the sort of purity which says I don’t smoke, I don’t chew, I don’t go with girls that do. And you have to disassociate holiness from all of that. Sanctification and holiness is something that is of fundamental importance. It is a matter of the heart and the life, and the scripture says, follow peace with all men and holiness without which no man shall see God. No man shall see God without holiness. And that holiness is a matter of an attitude of the heart which is expressed beautifully in this verse. This verse really has two parts to it, and in one of those parts we see the apostle telling us that we are to have an attitude towards other people, which is such that we never operate from respect of persons, what the scriptures call respect of persons. Notice it says here that you associate with the widow and with the orphan, widow and orphans. Now it is some problem for us to get into the meaning of that for today, but in those times the widow and the orphan was just the very bottom of the heap, the very bottom of the heap. And what the apostle is saying to us here is never in attitude or word or deed manifest the false kind of respect of person which is present in the world. Jesus said the first shall be last, and the last shall be first, and it is the mark of the elder, the person who is the elder stands as an example of purity. There is an interesting verse in James, the first chapter and the 27th verse which I would like to elaborate on with you briefly. Pure religion and undefiled before God and the Father is this, pure religion and undefiled before God and the Father is this, to visit the fatherless and the widows in their affliction and to keep himself unspotted from the world. Now an elder is a person who has mastered the contents of this verse. They are pure from the world, and they are pure from the world standard of judgment. Now we all know that holiness and sanctification have been given a bad name because of the trivial things which they’ve been associated with. You know the sort of purity which says, I don’t smoke, I don’t chew, I don’t go with girls that do. And you have to disassociate holiness from all of that. Sanctification and holiness is something that is fundamentally important. It is a matter of the heart and the life, and the scripture says, follow peace with all men and holiness without which no man shall see God. No man shall see God without holiness. And that holiness is a matter of an attitude of the heart which is expressed beautifully in this verse. This verse really has two parts to it, and in one of those parts we see the apostle telling us that we are to have an attitude towards other people, which is such that we never operate from respect of persons, what the scriptures call respect of persons. Notice it says here that you associate with the widow and with the orphan, widow and orphan. Now it is some problem for us to get into the meaning of that for today, but in those times the widow and the orphan was just the very bottom of the heap, the very bottom of the heap, and what the apostle is saying to us here is never in attitude or word or deed manifest the false kind of respect of person which is present in the world. Jesus said the first shall be last and the last shall be first, and it is the mark of the elder, the person who is mature in the kingdom of God and who can stand and exercise oversight and power, that that person does not ever discriminate against people on the standards which the world gives, and the poor and the uneducated and the simple and the helpless. All of those are treated as precious as are the educated and the wealthy and the successful. Paul in the 13th chapter, I believe it is 12th chapter of Romans, 12th chapter and the 16th verse says, I love the way the old English puts it, condescend to men of low estate. Your New American Standard and other versions will say something like associate with the lowly, but Paul in the old English there, that translation comes to so well, condescend. Now we don’t like to be condescending nowadays. We say, oh, don’t be condescending to me, right, because that puts us lower than the person who is condescending. Don’t talk down to me, we say, and there is a certain point to that, and Paul isn’t saying we ought to talk down to people, he’s saying we ought to get right down there, we ought to be right down there with them. In our attitude and in our actions, we should accept them as equals and treat everyone as being the same. Now, one of the great plagues of the church is respect the person. It is respect the person, and there is far too much done, and if you’re going to see the kind of fellowship growth that I know you want here, you must understand, you must never respect persons, and you must have people in your midst who will stand firm, stand strong in the attitude that everyone is as precious as everyone else in this night of death. And that the standards by which people are put up and others are put down mean nothing to God, and that if we judge according to those standards, we are judging according to the play. You must have people who are so set on that that they don’t have to think about it, that it is automatic. And then the apostle is also saying to us here there is a certain thing called the world, keep ourselves unspotted from the world, there’s a certain thing called the world. John tells us what is in the world. He says in his little letter, 1 John chapter 2, verses 16, all that is in the world, the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life. See, the world is simply the system of organized fallen flesh. It is also that same old system of human value which ranks things first and second and third in importance, according to a way that’s contrary to God’s will. And the elder is an individual who has his heart unspotted from that system of value, that system of lust, the lust of the eyes.
The lust of the eyes, I wonder if you’ve thought about that, what is the lust of the eyes? The lust of the eyes, primarily two things. One is the desire to appear well, the desire to look good. And the elder has to be established in the principle that what is right is right. And they are not trying to justify themselves in the eyes of men, but in the eyes of God. This lust of the eyes also has it in it also, the want to see things that are pretty, to have things pleasant, things that look good in that sense. That’s the lust of the eyes also. That’s a part of the world.
The lust of the flesh is more specifically the things that are localized in the parts of the body. We think here of food, of sex and comfort, the creature comforts we sometimes call them. And these really localize themselves in the body. Some of you who have been on a diet and have walked by and looked at a cheesecake or a piece of German chocolate, you know that there is a certain ache that sets in the back of your throat and in your tongue. We ache for these things. They must not occupy the central place.
And then the pride of life. What is the pride of life? It is simply the desire to dominate, to have one’s way, in some cases to appear to be better and to be thought better, to govern no matter what the cost, to rule with the will and with the power which is in your hands.
Now let me just go back to the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes and the pride of life. And let me read to you very simply, the elder is a person who has come to the place to where those do not dominate, those do not dominate his life or her life. These are people who can enjoy these. There’s nothing bad in these in themselves, nothing at all. But they must not be at the center as they are at the center of the system of the world. The elder is a person who has come to the place where they can simply stand aside and stand against these things when they need to and never be dominated by them, never.
You see, that is the model which Jesus set. And he also set us a model of power. He set us a model of purity and as elders we are to walk after it and he set us a model of power.
Let me read you one simple verse on that from the little letter of James speaking about elders as any sick among you. Let him call for the elders of the church and let them pray over him, anointing him with oil in the name of the Lord. And the prayer of faith shall save the sick and the Lord shall raise him up and if he have committed sin, they shall be forgiven.
Now this does not say that every time the elder comes to pray, the prayer of faith will be prayed. The prayer of faith is something which may happen as the elder comes to minister and sees what will fulfill the goodwill of God in that situation. Then the prayer of faith will be prayed and the answer will come. But in all cases, it is the role of the elder to step into the situation of need and their minister in power to meet that need to the glory of God. It is the elder who can set the example in that way.
And the elder who is filled with purity, whose heart is divorced from the world in the sense in which I’ve tried to describe, and who is able to exercise the power of God, they’re scattered throughout the whole flock of God, men and women, men and women alike. They stand in their place and when that happens, you have an assembly which can serve as the pillar and ground of truth. And you will see the kingdom of God go forward and then everyone who is around those people in that group will be able to fulfill the call of God, occupy until I come. The teaching will be right, the example will be right, the direction of all of your ministries of soul winning and missionary work and of charitable undertaking. And as you speak to the authority structure in the society around you, it will be right and it will come with power because you have a group which can function as the pillar and ground of truth.
You cannot do that with correct doctrines, you cannot do that just with correct plans. You have to have the people who will put it in place. You have to have many, many people who will stand and see to it that the right thing is said, that the right spirit is expressed, the right power is exercised. You cannot put that upon your elders who are given that office by name. You cannot put that on your deacons, you cannot put that on your minister, and you know you don’t want to. If you do, you miss out. You miss out. And the church of God languishes for the lack of men and women who will stand up, everyone in their place, and say, yes, I will stand as one who exercises oversight in whatever measure in the flock of God that is in one.
Just this one sentence to close here. You cannot enter into this simply by deciding to be that. You cannot enter into it by desire. Remember this sentence, determination, not desire, determine destiny, determination, not desire, determine destiny. What are you determined to be? What are you determined to do? You can decide. You can decide to put yourself in a way of accepting the experiences of your life in such a way as to make an elder of you, and I hope that that will be your decision today. I hope that you will decide, yes, that is for me. I accept it, I am open to it, I will have it in my life. There may be others here today who, when they think of that, really realize that they have not surrendered their lives to God, and they may say, I don’t want that. That isn’t for me. I want something else. Today is the day to change that attitude, and a decision can help you on that, and if you have come to the place to where you want to make that decision, now is the time.
We’re going to stand together and sing, Bob is going to come and lead us in a song, and if there are decisions we can help you with, the elders of the church will be here to be of use to you in this hour. Let’s stand together as we sing, what is the number, Bob? 462. And if you wish, this is your hour to come and join with this church, to make your profession of faith, or if you wish simply to discuss and pray with some others about matters with you in your life, we invite you to come forward at this time.
Now may the grace of God go with you, and open the truths which have been presented today as something real and meaningful to each one here, that this church may prosper and set forth the kingdom of God throughout all of this area and around the world, and may you know the joy of the Lord’s presence with you as you go, amen.